Jim Valvano

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James Thomas Anthony Valvano (March 10, 1946 – April 28, 1993), also known as Jimmy V, was an American college basketball player, mentor, and broadcaster. Valvano, a.k.a.

Although the head coach at NC State won the 1983 national championship against unbeatable odds, his team won the 1983 national championship against a bleak fate.

Since winning the national championship against the heavily favored Houston Cougars, Valvano is most remembered for his ecstatic celebration. Valvano made an inspiring and moving speech at the ESPY Awards in 1993, when terminally ill with cancer, telling listeners to laugh, think, and cry every day, quoting, "Don't give up."

Don't ever give up"; don't ever give up.

He spoke less than two months before he died of adenocarcinoma, a form of several glandular cancers.

The Jimmy V Award has been named in his honour in the ESPY Awards for the first time.

Every year, the Jimmy V Classic is held in his honor and in favor of cancer victims and survivors.

Early years

Valvano was the middle child of Rocco and Angelina Valvano and was of Italian descent, and he was from Italy. He was born in Corona, Queens, New York. Valvano, a three-sport athlete at Seaford High School on Long Island, graduated in 1963.

Vince Lombardi, a football coach, was Valvano's role model. On March 3, 1993, Valvano told an ESPY audience that he took some of Lombardi's inspirational speeches from the book Commitment to Excellence and used them with his staff. Valvano explained how he planned to use Lombardi's message to the Green Bay Packers in front of his Rutgers freshman basketball team before his first game as their coach. He also said that he had mistakenly told his team to "fight for the Green Bay Packers."

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College playing career

Valvano served as a point guard at Rutgers University in 1967, where he partnered with first-team All-American Bob Lloyd in the backcourt. Rutgers finished third in the 1967 National Invitation Tournament (NIT), which was the first basketball tournament hosted at the third Madison Square Garden under Valvano and Lloyd's leadership. (The 1967 NCAA tournament field featured just 23 teams, with NIT hosting 14 teams.) In 1967, he was named Senior Athlete of the Year at Rutgers, and he obtained a degree in English.

Coaching career

Valvano began his teaching career at Rutgers as the freshman coach and assistant for the varsity after graduation. He began his 19-year career as a head basketball coach at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore for a season; he later worked as an assistant at Connecticut for two years. He was the head coach at Bucknell, Iona, and North Carolina State prior to that. Valvano was hired at NC State on March 27, 1980, and made his Wolfpack debut on November 29, 1980, beating UNC-Wilmington 83-59, following Norm Sloan's departure to Florida. Valvano's teams were the ACC's tournament champions in 1983 and 1987, as well as the 1985 and 1989 champions. In 1983, the Wolfpack won the NCAA championship, in addition to 1985 and 1986 victories. In 1989, "Coach V" was named ACC Coach of the Year. In 1986, Valvano became NC State's athletic director. His overall record at NC State was 209–114 (.647), and his career as a head coach was 346–210 (.622).

Valvano is best known for his behavior on the court looking for someone to hug in the days after the Wolfpack's victory came after the game-winning shot in the 1983 NCAA championships. As time expired, Dereck Whittenburg fired a last-second desperation shot that was caught short of the rim and dunked by Lorenzo Charles.

In the book Personal Fouls by Peter Golenbock, allegations of rules breach surfaced in 1989. These allegations focused mostly on high school Chris Washburn, who received only 470 out of 1600 on his SAT (with 400 being the starting score). A 1989 NCAA probe concluded Valvano, but it later discovered that players sold shoes and game tickets. As a result, NC State's basketball program has been on probation for two years (the maximum) and has been barred from participating in the 1990 NCAA tournament. The state-appointed Poole Commission released a 32-page report finding that there were no significant breaches of NCAA rules and that Valvano and his team's ineffective oversight of players' academic development broke "the spirit, not the letter of the law."

Valvano was forced to resign as the school's athletic director in October 1989, but stayed as basketball coach throughout the 1989-1990 season after this study. Valvano negotiated an understanding with NC State and resigned as basketball coach after the school's faculty and new chancellor put pressure on it. The NC State Senate, the North Carolina Attorney General, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, the NC State Board of Trustees, and the NCAA investigated Valvano and the NC State basketball program. On the part of Valvano or his employees, no evidence of discrimination offences or academic or financial impropriety was found. "I would feel secure with you as his mentor and encourage him to learn from you," Dave Didion, the NCAA prosecutor prosecuting Valvano's case, wrote a personal letter to Valvano, saying, among other things, "If I had a son." Valvano's student-athletes did not do well in the classroom, according to a school investigation, as only 11 of the players he taught before 1988 had an average of C or better.

Valvano's account of these events can be found in Valvano's 1991 autobiography, Valvano: They Gave Me a Lifetime Marriage and Then They Declared Me Dead.

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